Like any good literary text, the word recreation can have many meanings. This paper is concerned with three of those meanings. First, recreation is just plain fun, an “activity that amuses or entertains;” it is also a measure of leisure and escape, “freedom from labor, responsibility” (American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition). However, the word also carries another important meaning, that of re-creation, which I use to refer to the re-creative activity of reading. In exploring reading as recreation, I’m interested in what makes the reading of literature intrinsically valuable and necessary: the fact that it can be enjoyable, creative and educational, in a very specific sense.
A common misconception about literature is that it’s “merely” enjoyable, an escape (as opposed to a “productive” activity). This fallacy has spawned many of the stereotypes that afflict those of us who study and teach literature. It is ironic that, in an entertainment-obsessed culture, the “fun-value” of literature is not enough to validate its intrinsic value. In my most cynical moments, I believe this is simply because the potential of profiting off of literature is limited. Perhaps if “they” (our corporate sponsors?) put commercials in between chapters, books would make a comeback, and literature would once again be valuable and respectable. And now, a brief message from those sponsors (Cox Cable, 3M and Chevron): We currently have several marketing firms and focus groups engaged in researching literature’s profit potential, in order to save it, of course. Ok, now imagine a swelling sentimental soundtrack, a sepia-toned digitally softened image of an educated-looking person (complete with eyeglasses and leather patches on blazer elbows. Sorry, the pipe is no longer p.c.). This person is lovingly thumbing through an old, hardback book as a slightly gravelly but mellifluous voice-over says: “Do people really care about the spotted owl/the harp seal/great books? People do.” Please trust that we are hard at work on this issue. In the meantime, continue to watch television and consume heavily, like good little Americans. Thank you.
Yes, written narratives can provide enjoyment, and partly in an escapist sense. However, this idea need not be negative. I never thought I would be arguing for escapism (again, in our escapist culture), but my ideas on the meaning of “escape” have been modified. Escape need not be limited to its modern connotation: a flight from responsibility or thought. In fact, the word carries some very positive (and relevant) denotations: “To break loose from confinement; get free…to avoid capture, danger, or harm…to grow beyond a cultivated area.” (American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition)
The escape of recreation can be a productive vacation from the relentless pressures, confinements and even cultivations of being. As Jerry Farber argues, the “esthetic release” offered by any form of art can be a mini psychological vacation—a trip to the mind spa for a mud bath and a rubdown—that leaves us better able to cope with “reality.” “When [the esthetic release] is most nearly complete, we seem to merge with what we are perceiving: the sky, the novel, the song; all responsibility for self seems to have vanished” (18). And unlike other “extractive” forms of reading (a newspaper, for instance), in reading literature, our constant striving stops. (Farber 20) Because of the temporary disengagement of our personal needs and goals,… the perception becomes an end in itself” (Farber 20). And we get a break.
We should not underestimate the value of a brief (healthy) hiatus from self-concern. As Farber notes, the need for a break from self-concern is so strong (especially, I think, in such a fragmented, stressful and noisy world) that we seek to escape it in many unhealthy ways. Most of the unhealthy escape routes, such as televised sporting events, alcohol and drugs, don’t just diminish self-concern, but “our ability to respond to anything, even art” (Farber 21).
While textual narratives can be highly habit-forming (especially if you get the really good stuff), they certainly do not lead to intellectual numbness. In fact, there are no known physical side effects, and literature has yet to be proven harmful to pregnant women. Although, as noted by the surgeon general, it is perhaps less than prudent to operate heavy machinery while under the influence of a really good novel. The sponsors would like me to remind you to never, never read and drive. Thank you.
Wolfgang Iser also addresses the escape offered by literature. He describes “the temporary self-alienation that occurs to the reader when his consciousness brings to life the ideas formulated by the author” (Implied 66). Once the reader is “entangled” in the text, her own preconceptions continually lose ground to the text (part of the loss of self-concern). The text becomes her “present,” and her own ideas “fade into the past.” When this occurs, the reader is open to “the immediate experience of the text, which was impossible so long as [her] preconceptions were [her] ‘present’” (Implied 64). Iser claims this mini-vacation from selfhood is more than just pleasurable, but essential to the formation of the text’s illusion (which is in turn, central to other important benefits of reading). Interestingly, the illusion offered by the literary text is dependent on, and may actually be even more beneficial than the escape it offers.
Now, you may be thinking that this might be a good time to flex our ideologies, make a few value judgements, and decide on what kind of literature would constitute a negative escape, in which case, I’d vote for Danielle Steele and John Grisham, among others. But then we’d have to discuss whether or not they constitute “literature,” which would, no doubt, lead us into a heated debate over what literature actually is, which…I’m sorry, but I’ve just been advised by our sponsors that we do not have time to address these issues here. Thank you.
Let’s see, we were discussing an escape that leads to illusion. That doesn’t sound too positive, does it? (The sponsors are eyeing me nervously again.) Once again, an important distinction lies in the way we define our terms. According to Iser, illusion is a “fixed or definable outline” taken on by the “gestalt” of a text, and is essential to our understanding of that text. (Implied 59) While he recognizes that “an overdose of illusion may lead to triviality,” he claims it is still necessary. If we couldn’t find or impose the consistency on a literary text that creates its illusion, we would simply stop reading. The text’s illusion makes the experience it offers more accessible; it makes it “readable” (Implied 59). And although it’s only a a transitory state, illusion is necessary to “understanding of an unfamiliar experience”(Implied 61). In order to process something well, must be able to imagine it (which explains the importance of framing, metaphor and the use of examples even in expository writing, and of course, in teaching).
This illusion-building process creates a space in which several phenomena can occur. As the reader builds a text’s illusions and alternates between involvement in and observation of them, she:
“opens [herself] up to the unfamiliar world without being imprisoned in it. Through this process, the reader moves into the presence of the fictional world and so experiences the realities of the text as they happen” (Implied 61).
Having left our self-involvement temporarily behind, we begin to create in our minds the illusion suggested by the text, if consistency is not obvious, we attempt to create it and apply it to the text. This all points to the fact that the writing of a text is by no means the last creative act on the chain. Embedded in the act of reading a narrative, is an act of creation: re-creation.
Unlike most other forms of escape (aesthetic or otherwise), reading is creative. The reader does not just passively absorb a text, like she could a piece of music, a painting, a movie, a glass of wine, a quaalude. And, although many of these would probably evoke some activity of the imagination, not nearly as consistently and effectively as in the reading of a narrative. Interestingly, opportunities for re-creative activity are limited in many other forms of art, like music and the visual arts, where most of “the gestalt” is provided. You could stare at the elaborate walls of the Sistine Chapel for years and not achieve the exact sort of mental activity and pleasure offered by one of Matisse’s five-line, black and white sketches. And yet, a text provides even less visual information than a sketch.
There are also important difference between other forms of narrative, like film, and the literary text: in the text, few or no images are provided for us—we must imagine, literally make images—a process that makes the experience special. “With the novel the reader must use his imagination to synthesize the info given him, and so his perception is simultaneously richer and more private…” (Iser,Implied 57) If one can see something, one cannot imagine it. As Iser puts it, It is precisely the “elements of indeterminacy,” the pregnant lack in a text that enable us to picture things, to re-create. Without this negative space left open, like a blank canvas, “we should not be able to use our imagination” (Implied 57).
The benefits of this recreative activity range further than mere mental exercise. Once we put ourselves, our ideas, our “striving” aside, we don’t just get a break, we don’t just get to form images—something new becomes possible—we are able to learn. As Iser points out, “reading reflects the process by which we gain experience” (Implied 65). In order to learn, we must make room for new ideas. When we read, “we must suspend the ideas and attitudes that shape our personalities before we can experience the unfamiliar world of the literary text”(65). During this process, Iser says, something happens to us, much more than mere “identification” with the text. Iser points out that our little vacations from ourselves can remove certain barriers to learning. The removal of the “subject-object division that otherwise is a prerequisite for all knowledge and all observation, and the removal of this decision puts reading in an apparently unique position as regards the possible absorption of new experiences” (Iser, Implied 66). In becoming involved and invested in a text, in participating in the act of recreation, we “‘other’ the text less, are more likely to learn, be swayed, at least momentarily” (Iser, Implied 66). (There’s an interesting resonance here to Robert Scholes’ concepts of narrativity and surrender/recovery.) In an early effort to refute fallacies regarding fiction as an unproductive, escapist pleasure, D.W. Harding had this to say: “It seems nearer the truth…to say that fictions contribute to defining the reader’s or spectator’s values, and perhaps stimulating his desires, rather than to suppose that they gratify desire by some mechanism of vicarious experience” (qtd in Iser, Implied 67). Reading is an active process, whose dynamism can lead to intellectual growth.
Now we are talking about an escape that leads to illusion which can lead to growth, development. (The sponsors are smiling and nodding, relieved to finally hear an unambiguously positive concept.) This positive aspect of the escape offered by a literary text is twofold. The text begins to serve as both a parallel (a mirror that reflects experiences, dispositions similar to the reader’s) and a contrast. In this paradoxical situation, the reader is “forced to reveal aspects of himself in order to experience a reality which is different from his own” (Iser, Implied 57). The impact on the reader depends on the reader’s level of active participation—in providing unwritten parts of text, “in supplying all the missing links, he must think in terms of experiences different from his own; indeed, it is only by leaving behind the familiar world of his own experience that the reader can truly participate in the adventure the literary text offers him” (Iser, Implied 57). Reading’s similarity to the process by which we gain experience leads to the same possibility of broadened horizons, and improved thinking—not just idealistically, but psychologically, and even physiologically:
“In the act of reading, having to think of something that we have not yet experienced does not mean only being in a position to conceive or even understand it; it also means that such acts of conception are possible and even successful to the degree that they lead to something being formulated in us. For someone else’s thoughts can only take a form in our consciousness if, in the process, our unformulated faculty for deciphering these thoughts is brought into play—a faculty which, in the act of deciphering, also formulates itself.” (Iser, Implied 67-68, my emphasis)
Like any new thought, attempting to conceive of and understand unfamiliar ideas forges new neural pathways, developing and strengthening that all-important muscle, the brain. This mental work out can potentially improve our conceptual and critical abilities. So, we see that the two recreative processes we’ve discussed can lead to a third recreative process. As we read, we have the opportunity to grow and change, or re-create ourselves.
While the literary narrative allows new ideas in, it also helps us to examine our old ones. When texts present us with negative space, gaps to fill, the object, says Iser, is to “make us aware of the nature of our own capacity for providing links. In such cases, the text refers back directly to our own preconceptions—which are revealed by the act of interpretation that is a basic element of the reading process.” (Implied, 55). In the process of absorbing a narrative and forming its illusion in our minds, we are offered a glimpse of our own preconceptions, specifically, opinions or conceptions that were “formed in advance of full or adequate knowledge or experience,” our prejudices or biases (American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition).
Not only can the process of reading result in growth, it can also lead to self-discovery. As Iser argues, in presenting a “need to decipher,” the text also lets us formulate our own capacity to decipher: “we bring to the fore an element of our being of which we are not directly conscious…it also entails the possibility that we may formulate ourselves and so discover what had previously seemed to elude our consciousness.” (Implied 68, my emphasis) The development made possible by literature’s recreative activity can lead to self formulation and self knowledge. (The sponsors are shrugging. They are unsure of the value of that last one, but are willing to accept it.)
In the reading of a literary text, the reader’s capacity to absorb new experiences, to examine preconceptions and to decipher meaning are reinforced, strengthened. Horizons are expanded, the intellect is exercised and developed, and self examination and knowledge are encouraged. This is a more concrete and less idealistic version of the New Critical idea of Literature making a reader a “better person.” Who knows how the reader’s ethics may be affected, she may not become a “better person”—kinder, more honest and responsible—but the reading of literature will almost surely make her a better thinker.
Perhaps it’s time for a disclaimer: the reading of literature is not totally without risk. There are potential psychological side-effects. Consumption of literary texts can lead to increased mental activity, unfamiliar thought patterns and a marked desire to discuss what you’ve read. Be warned: this can be a problem in some social circles. Friends don’t often let friends ramble on about Dostoevsky. Keep this in mind and consume wisely and safely. In fact, due to issues of liability, the sponsors have asked me to ask you not to continue reading this paper unless you are over 18 or have parental approval and/or supervision. Thank you.
…
Since the advent of the modern world there has been a clearly discernible tendency toward privileging the performative aspect of the author-text-reader relationship, whereby the pre-given is no longer viewed as an object of representation but rather as material from which something new is fashioned.”
(Iser, Prospecting 249)
Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” embodies many of these recreative activities in a very direct way. Using a narrator who actively manipulates and controls the reader’s experience, Le Guin plays with her readers, emphasizing the “performative aspect” of a very interesting “author-text-reader relationship.” The results of this game are, I believe, heightened activity and involvement by the reader (re-creation), which leads to heightened pleasure in reading (recreation), and potentially to more dramatic self-questioning and possible development by the reader (the re-creation of oneself).
Le Guin’s story begins as a conventional narrative, diving right in to the creation of the illusion. “With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea” (Cassill, 967). This sentence is typical of the first paragraph’s densely image-packed, highly descriptive, almost cinematic language. In less than 30 lines, Le Guin establishes a mythical society called Omelas. Like a fairy tale, Omelas is a bit generic—important elements are described, but not in too much detail—allowing the reader to make the society her own (fill the gaps), becoming instantly involved in recreation. As we find it, Omelas is happiness incarnate, with the Festival of Summer about to begin (can you think of a better time/reason to have a festival?). There is mass merriment of various kinds—something for everyone. There is music, dancing, flapping banners, a race about to begin, many clanging bells, and joy all around. Le Guin starts the reader off on a run, situating her in the middle of an ultra-happy fairy tale/fantasy setting.
Interestingly, this setting is one that would be at least familiar, if not nostalgically beloved to most people in our culture. Not accidentally, she creates a familiar and ideal situation, with which she seduces the reader. And despite being an expert science fiction and futuristic world-builder, Le Guin doesn’t choose an alien world to get this message across, but a very familiar one, one dear to most of our ideologies, and one which sets up some rather specific expectations.
In the first paragraph, the reader is immediately active, recreating. With the author’s prompting, we are off and running, each imagining our own Omelas. I believe this is a pleasurable activity to most of us—although to different degrees. Being an idealist and a lover of fairy-tales, I was only too willing to chuck my disbelief out the nearest window and plunge, head first, into the narrative. Omelas came alive in my head. (Which, i believe, lead directly to how strongly the story affected me later.) However, I know of other readers who, being a bit more cynical or less fond of the familiar setting, moved into the story more carefully, even a bit suspiciously. Was the pleasure of their “esthetic experience” lessened by their skepticism? Perhaps, because skepticism (being a sort of protection against deflated expectations) would certainly influence the way their expectations are later shattered, which Iser believes is so important.
According to Iser, the esthetic experience made possible by the literary text is the result of a balancing operation performed by the reader (between observation of and involvement in illusion, and between establishing and disrupting consistency). (Implied, 61) If the balancing act stops, recreative activity stops, the fun stops. “The inherent nonachievement of balance is a prerequisite for the very dynamism of the operation. In seeking the balance, we inevitably have to start out with certain expectations, the shattering of which is integral to the esthetic experience” (Implied, 61).
Le Guin actively seeks to manipulate the reader’s fluctuation between observation of and involvement in illusion, which directly affects the reader’s experience of the text. In “Omelas,” after a paragraph of straight narrative, suddenly a voice breaks in, vaguely addressing the reader, beginning a sort of dialogue that will grow stronger. “How is one to tell about the joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?” (Cassill, 968) Le Guin has just given us a very vivid description of joy, so what is the purpose of this question? It does not enhance our illusion—the images she has carefully planted in our minds—but actually disrupts it. She goes on to describe the Omelasians and their culture, in a more matter-of-fact way, “They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer anymore” (Cassill 968, my emphasis). Here, she begins to address reader directly, with “you see” and then positions herself with that reader (“we”), in contrast to Omelas.
Not only has Le Guin halted the narrative, disrupting our illusion building by addressing us directly, but her intrusion into the narrative forces us out of our involvement in the illusion and into the observation of the illusion and our involvement in it. She has also begun to position us in relation to the Omelasians, a strategy that links us to the story even more firmly. She continues both of these strategies throughout the third paragraph, in which she gets the reader very involved in describing specific social elements of Omelas.
Here, again, Le Guin begins subtly. The narrator first admits a kind of ignorance about her narrative: ”I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few” (968). She begins to lure us into a more active re-creation by suggesting or offering opinions about how Omelas is——which is, of course, entirely under her control——as if we could change it. Eventually, she asks us directly to participate, claiming her words seem too unreal, too like a fairy tale. ”Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly, I cannot suit you all” (Cassill 968). What follows is a sort of guided utopian brainstorming session.
We are told certain things and allowed leeway to imagine on others, “it doesn’t matter, as you like” (Cassill 969). Then Le Guin gets really playful and begins manipulating the reader’s illusion building. Addressing the reader directly once again, the narrator worries that Omelas might seem too “goody-goody,” and gives out another direct invitation to participate in the narrative. “If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don’t hesitate” (Cassill 969).
These ongoing invitations to participate and add to the narrative play with the subject-object division of which Iser speaks, manipulating our oscillation between involvement in (re-creation) and observation of the illusion. These games also keep any balance between the two poles at bay, which, according to Iser, retains the dynamism of the esthetic experience. Meanwhile, the idea (or “illusion”?) that we are helping to build Omelas (by being free to formulate some of its elements) involves us more deeply in the formation of the illusion.
At the same time, Le Guin is continually raising and shattering expectations. Ranging from the first paragraph’s implied fairy tale/ utopian expectations (which are later devastated by the Omelasians’ dark secret), to some much more overtly raised and debunked expectations. As early as the second paragraph, Le Guin starts to anticipate, encourage and manipulate our expectations. She openly discusses what we would expect, based on the type of narrative she’s created: “Given a description such as this, one tends to make certain assumptions… one tends to look next for the king…” (Cassill 968). This, of course, is an invitation to imagine/expect a king. This expectation however, is quickly frustrated as the narrator abruptly takes over again: “But there was no king” (Cassill 968).
In her discussion of Omelasian sexuality, Le Guin really toys with the reader’s expectations. We’ve been invited to add an orgy, if we feel Omelas needs it. Le Guin then takes it upon herself to direct the reader’s imagined orgy:
“Let us not, however, have temples from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstacy and ready to copulate with anyone, lover or stranger, who desires union with the deep godhead of the blood…” (Cassill 969)
In asking us not to create this scene, she creates it, and we see it. Is she playing with us? Just when we think maybe she’s worried about the morality or explicit sexuality of that image, she reverses that assumption with the rest of the sentence: “although that was my first idea” (Cassill 969). She then explains that it’s the clergy, not the copulation that bothers her. Displaying the very opposite of our possible assumption, she proposes that the nudes should be wandering about, “offering themselves like divine soufflés to the hunger of needy and the rapture of the flesh” (Cassill 969). She proceeds to celebrate the copulation. This is typical of the story’s twists and turns and of Le Guin’s slightly perverse humor. She seems to enjoy dabbling with our expectations—luring us into a belief, an assumption and then pulling what we thought was the rug out from under us. It should be noted that, like her story, Le Guin’s playfulness is not without a serious social conscience. She includes what she calls “a not unimportant point:” that the children of these rituals be “beloved and looked after by all…” (Cassill 969). (This is perhaps the least believable aspect of her fantastic story—that a society could exist entirely without sexual stigmas.)
In the fourth and fifth paragraphs, Le Guin returns to uninterrupted narrative. Here, I believe she is reinforcing the illusion of Omelas, which was undermined by the narrator’s rather impertinent, if useful presence. Like the opening paragraph, these are rich in description and lack the direct presence of the narrator. These paragraphs also pick up threads from the first one. Le Guin once again illustrates the joy present in Omelas, she continues to describe the race—the impatience of horses and riders who begin to line up at starting line, the crowds who are assembled to watch… With these descriptions, the reader’s anticipation mounts, and seems due to climax when the race begins. But the race never begins. Instead of the starting pistol, the narrative halts again, with a jolt. At this point, the reader may well be frustrated, intrigued or both. Either way, she is involved, and in no way prepared for what comes next. Le Guin lures us into a fairy tale, invites us participate and then draws us into a nightmare.
Again, Le Guin pushes us abruptly out of illusion formation and into observation, calling attention to the illusion itself. “Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing” (Cassill 970). This query (both a rhetorical question and a rhetorical device) is posed directly to the reader. Of course, it is the narrator who finally answers it.
Why this bumpy ride? According to Iser, it’s simply more effective. “The act of recreation is not a smooth or continuous process, but one which, in its essence, relies on interruptions of the flow to render it efficacious” (Implied 62). Le Guin consciously constantly interrupts and guides the narrative. This forces the reader to review and revise the illusion she is building, the expectations with which it is formulated, and the preconceptions upon which it is based. Depending on the reader, this process can be frustrating or fun, but it generally leads to greater involvement with the text, simply because it is unexpected and leads to increased interpretive activity on the part of the reader.
Now, Le Guin introduces Omelas’ dark secret, its raison d’être hereux. Nothing we have read has really prepared us for the lonely, malnourished child locked in the tool room. But perhaps it is our utter surprise, coupled with our extra ordinary investment in the illusion of Omelas that makes this development more disturbing and poignant. The readers of this story are not unlike the children of Omelas—blindly enjoying everything, until they learn the secret…or maybe the cynics among us were waiting for something like this? Either way, to different extents, the readers have played an active role in the creation of this suddenly suspect utopia, which makes for stronger feelings when things become complex.
These strategies increase the recreative activity offered by the text and greatly enhance the re-creative experience, in its three forms, because, as Iser writes, “it is only by activating the reader’s imagination that the author can hope to involve him and so realize the intentions of his text” (Implied 57). It was Le Guin’s intention to arouse ambiguous feelings, to have the reader want to believe in Omelas (perhaps even feel like part of it) and desire its happiness, in order to be more devastated by what makes it possible. In the introduction added to the story when it was collected in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, Le Guin says the story was inspired by the following passage from “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” by William James:
[I]f the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier’s and Bellamy’s and Morris’s utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment, what except a specific and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though the impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?”
(Le Guin, Quarters 275)
The story is organized to make us not just think about, but feel the conflict of “clutching at the happiness offered” and knowing how hideous it would be to enjoy it, to benefit from such a “bargain.”
Le guin then writes, “The dilemma of the American conscience can hardly be better stated.” (Winds, 275) “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is meant to be a mirror not just of society in the abstract, but of us.
In another way, Le Guin is actually “playing” with us. In Prospecting, Iser applies strategies of game playing to the literary text. One of those strategies is mimicry, “a play designed to generate illusion. Whatever is denoted by the signifier or foreshadowed by the schemata should be taken as if it were what it says” (256). Iser goes on to explain two reasons for this. First of all, “the more perfect the illusion, the more real will seem the world it depicts” (256). “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” first presents a very effective and persuasive illusion. This draws the reader in and involves her in the text, while raising both minor and major expectations that will later be exploded. Second, “If the illusion…is punctured and so revealed as what it is, the world it depicts turns into a looking glass enabling the referential world outside the text to be observed” (256). Omelas becomes a socially-conscious mirror image of America in several ways. Le Guin’s interruption of the narrative punctures the illusion, creating a juxtaposition of the illusion of Omelas with its status as a literary construct. The narrator’s positioning of herself with “us” in contrast to Omelas, reinforces the referential aspect of the illusion.
In order to get a very serious message across, Le Guin chooses a playful approach over a didactic one. This was an intelligent and practical choice. These sophisticated games are by no means prerequisites to social commentary, but it takes skill to criticize a reader’s accepted beliefs, while keeping her not only vulnerable and open-minded, but actually invested in the vehicle of the criticism. A narrative can blend a social message with recreation, in its many forms, making the message both more poignant and more palatable. But, as Iser argues, the literary text must do this very delicately:
“Strangely enough, we feel that any confirmative effect—such as we implicitly demand of expository texts, as we refer to the objects they are meant to present—is a defect in a literary text. For the more a text individualizes or confirms an expectation it has initially aroused, the more aware we become of its didactic purpose, so that at best we can only accept or reject the thesis forced upon us. More often than not, the very clarity of such texts will make us want to free ourselves from their clutches.” (Implied 53)
The carefully-crafted illusion and expectation games in “Omelas” keep our involvement high, our defenses down, and our preconceptions aside—thus clearing a path for a disturbing message to enter and perhaps occasion the third, and perhaps most important kind of re-creation with which we are concerned: self questioning, self knowledge, self re-creation:
“The efficacy of a literary text is brought about by the apparent evocation and subsequent negation of the familiar. What at first seemed to be an affirmation of our assumptions leads to our own rejection of them, thus tending to prepare us for a re-orientation. And it is only when we have outstripped our preconceptions and left the shelter of the familiar that we are in a position to gather new experiences” (Implied, 64).
Once we have given in to and participated in the building the illusion of Omelas, we are sudenly alone and vulnerable in a new, dark Omelas. We have been stripped of our assumptions. Our expectations have been demolished (and so made visible, and opened to critique). Our preconceptions no longer ring true. We have been prepared for a “re-orientation.”
In that uncomfortable, vulnerable moment, change is possible. We may look at ourselves and the lives we take for granted and begin to think about them differently (I know I did after studying this story), perhaps beginning to fashion our own values instead of merely accepting popular ones. “Omelas” is a wonderful example of how literary texts provide a means and a forum to stimulate, enhance and shelter this most important of recreative activities.
It seems that only in the presence of uncertainty are we really able to evolve, to grow. Ironically, this recreative pattern has long resided in one of our oldest narrative genres—the fairy tale. In a story that is said to explain “the necessity of an individual morality” (Contemporary Authors, 269), it seems fitting that, like the fairy tale hero, the ones who choose to walk away from the beautiful but flawed perfection of Omelas must leave the familiar and comfortable and venture into the unknown to find the only reward greater than “happiness”—themselves.
Françoise Lemieux
11 December, 1998
Hobbes Asleep
Our ongoing cat art photography series begins with Hobbes doing one of the things he does best.
Permission to read a lot! (of good stuff).
The Great Gringas of San Miguel
San Miguel is chock full of colorful, feisty, independent women. The question is: Are these mujeres that way when they come, or does SMA make them so? The other day, I ran into Anne, one of our many guests-turned-residents (and one of my favorites).
“I was talking to Sallie the other day,” she says. “You remember Sallie? We’re still great friends.” (Sallie is another favorite former guest, and an ardent photographer.)
I smile — one of the bet best perks of my business is being a facilitator friendships. So many past guests keep in touch, visit each other, attend each other’s weddings, etc. Gotta love being a little locus in a network of new friends.
“Anyway,” she continues. “We were reminiscing about meeting at the Casita. We call ourselves the class of 1997.” This brings a huge grin to my face.
“Funny,” she says, staring off into space. “I used to be afraid to drive here in town. Now I drive in Mexico City, no Problem.”
At this, I laugh out loud. (By golly, I’m so proud!) With 20 years of Mexico under my belt, I am not a little intimidated by the idea of driving in Mexico City. (I’m also intimidated by the idea of breathing in Mexico City. But, oh, the museums!)
Maybe San Miguel does works some kind of magic on its profusion of expat women. Of course, these ladies have to have a certain courageous spark in order to come down here in the first place…
Thank God for creative, adventurous women. Que vivan las gringas de San Miguel!
(It’s your turn…take a deep breath and leap! See you soon.)
Hasta Pronto,
Casita de las Flores
San Miguel de Allende
by casita de las flores, san miguel de allende on July 3, 2013
Don’t just take our word for it. Check out the LA Times Article…
The Gringas of San Miguel de Allende : They Came, They Saw, They Set Up Croning Ceremonies–How A Community of Women Grew and Flourishes in the Land of Machismo.
The Tuesday Market — a photo essay
It’s All About the Egg
(The Prequel to The Casita Story)
I wrote this nearly a decade ago, just four months before finding the house (and immense project) that would keep me very, very busy and eventually become Casita de las Flores…I hope this little blog provides encouragement to those who dream about turning over a new tree. (Do it!!)
Six-Month Check-In. May, 2001
I’m sitting in the hammock listening to the birds. So many birds.
I’ve never lived in the country before, so I really had no idea about the birds. Watching a woodpecker peck (first time I’ve seen one outside of Woody in the cartoons). Feeling a dreamy, lethargic peace at 3:25 on a warm but overcast silent saturday afternoon. Thinking (not too hard) of what I really should be doing, other than sitting in the hammock, listening to the birds, watching the woodpecker peck.
I’m a world away from my life in the US, where, on the rare occasion that I couldn’t think of what I should be doing, my impatient mind immediately and urgently intruded to suggest the next vitally important task—one in a long, long list of vitally important tasks to be done.
But here in my rented yard outside of San Miguel, my mind simply wanders over my rather lazy day.
My mother claims that, if you’re lucky, you can accomplish one real thing a day in Mexico. I’ve proved her wrong a thousand or so times already, but I’ve come to realize that sometimes it’s actually good for you to accomplish only one thing in a day.
This morning, I continued the house search. Went and looked at a tiny, extremely funky house for sale, for which the owners had decided on a firm, absurdly high price—despite having no idea of the place’s square footage, and despite the fact that the “house” is in need of tons (of tons) of work…stucco on the walls, for starters.
There. That’s one (attempt at) productive activity. Ah, yes…I also got an email from a friend I haven’t connected with since I left the States six months ago.
Six months. Half a year of a new life.
“Aha,” comes a quiet voice through the languid afternoon haze. “Write,” it says. So here I am, on the page. (Well, on the laptop, in the hammock.)
I admit, I’ve been having guilty type-A thoughts lately—I haven’t been doing enough. I’ve been “wasting time.” Nearly six months of time! What will become of me??!! Ack.
But then my friend in the States writes about how great my life seems—having the time to do the things I love—painting, photography, gardening, writing, yoga, dancing, hammock roosting.
Living.
Suddenly, even though I am lazing in the garden, I feel as if my life is, actually, productive. Every now and then, life should simply be about living. Yes, of course, I am a bit poor, financially speaking (except for my tiny nest egg). And I have no real prospects (yet). But my life is rich, isn’t it?
Rich in butterflies (plenty of the stomach kind, but mostly the insect kind): Small black flutterers with cobalt and crimson spots gleaming in the sun. A few huge white lovelies sailing calmly by, and the occasional stately orange and black Monarch.
Rich in flora: Nasturtium, spinach, and forget-me-not seedlings standing as tall as they can, just a few days out of the earth. (Am I, perhaps, a seedling, just six months out of new earth?)
A miniature broccoli forest coming up. Infant zucchini boldly protruding from under wide, variegated, sun-catching leaves. Tomato plants freely offering up the pointy yellow flowers that portend juicy red fruit. Cheeky little adolescent lettuces. (There is so much hope and bravery in a new garden, not to mention many happy salads to come.)
Rich in feathered friends: Noisy, rat-tat-tat woodpeckers. Mournful doves mooning about. Haughty orange orioles lounging in the branches. Huge bickering blackbirds squabbling on the ground. Tiny, blindingly scarlet birdlets lingering in the purple Jacaranda blooms. And of course, many busy little jewel-colored hummingbirds zooming from blossom to blossom.
Perhaps I was a hummingbird in my first-world life? Not jewel-colored, so much as pale beige, but buzzing frenetically from duty to duty…
Maybe. But now what am I? Not a seedling, not a hummingbird. A hen, perhaps. (Colorful now—yes!) Sitting—roosting on my little egg of potential, my potential egg—doing apparently nothing, but thinking, dreaming, and scheming, waiting for my future to hatch.
Unemployed, yes. Poor-ish, yes. But I am so very rich in one of the great bounties Mexico has to offer: Time.
Time to play at painting the Virgen de Guadalupe. Time to tinker on the guitar (I can now play Greensleeves—if I had a phone, Carnegie Hall would SO be calling). Time for the joys of photography (which literally means “writing with light”). And, most of all, time to write (with light, ink or pixels). To muse, to jot, to scribble. Attempting to get to know myself and my newish surroundings though black marks on a white page/screen.
My doubts seem to dissolve, and, for once (or twice), I actually know I am doing fine.
Sure, I have no foreseeable way to make a living in Mexico (to be “secure”), but I am fine. Really fine. Finer than frog hair, as my father always says. (It took me almost twenty years of hearing that expression before I got it—“Wait,” she finally says to herself, “Frogs don’t have hair…ohhhh.”) And so, despite my lack of the career-building activities most people in my former Stateside life deem to be essential to a sense of self, my self seems to be fine. Finer than…iguana hair.
Six months into this Mexican adventure of indeterminate length, I sit and look back. Not literally back at the towering Mesquite tree that supports the north end of my hammock, but back at the months of stress and preparation for leaving my conventional life up North, half a year ago:
Quit job. Finish thesis. Jump through all the right hoops to graduate. Sort through 20 or so years of accumulated stuff (the pack rat’s instant karma). Have two massive garage sales and still give a driveway full of stuff to a charitable organization. Fall in love at the last-possible, most-insane minute, and leave man and town and country behind anyway, because it had to be done (because it was my future, my egg).
Then:
Drive 2000 miles in a car filled to the gills with Mom, pets and my carefully-packed belongings (60% books)—still, somehow, so very much stuff.
Arrive at new, Mexican home. Unpack, organize, play house and play in the garden. Survive while distance smothers a fledgling relationship. Live in near-total isolation for four months while trying to find a foothold in what was once, long ago, Home—the place I grew up. Get to know (again) the town, the language, the lifestyle, and the birds. And then, finally, blossom once again into the world of humankind.
So very much can happen in six short months.
Did I make the right decision? To leave almost everything (material) behind for a brave/insane new adventure in a foreign country? Definitely. (I mostly think.) Of course, it has been very difficult, at times, to have sacrificed security and a nice, reliable paycheck for the unknown. But the benefits are manifold, not the least of which is the time to simply sit in the hammock and think. And tend to my egg.
—
Ten Year Check-In, May, 2011
Forgot how to play Greensleves on the guitar, but learned how to play it on the Piano. Not painting at the moment, but still crazy in love with photography. Accomplish a multitude of tasks on most days, but still spend the occasional lazy Saturday pondering in my new hammock in my new garden. (And even manage to write now and then.)
What I didn’t know then was that Casita de las Flores, which turns ten next year (!), would change my life in so many ways: providing me with a life-sized art project, meaningful work, lots of new friends, and even a decent income, eventually.
Best of all, a decade later, I am still rich—not so much in money, though I am a wee bit more secure—but in time (and birds and butterflies and seedlings). Yet, I find I’m roosting yet again, sitting on that good old future egg, wondering what comes next.
Here’s to you, adventurers—don’t let the unknown keep you down. And take really good care of that egg.
Wishing you love and lots of great eggs,
Casita de las Flores
www.CasitaDeLasFlores.com
Casita Tripadvisor Reviews
posted by casita de las flores, san miguel de allende on May 19, 2011
Crazy Day in San Miguel
At 5:54 am on the second Saturday in June, I am catapulted out of sleep by a brass band playing under my window. Several trumpets, a trombone, a giant bass drum and an actual tuba for the requisite oom pah pahs. Oh, yes, can’t forget the cymbals. A dozen pair, by the sound of it.
It is not, alas, a romantic serenade. (Such a suitor would be summarily dismissed.) It’s the day before el Dia de los Locos, San Miguel’s yearly celebration of Saint Anthony of Padua and lunacy in general. This Sunday in June is reserved for crazy people. The entire town, and then some, participates.
For the hip, there are two places to be in San Miguel on Locos Sunday: in the parade or watching it. If you’re in the milling mile or so of costumed revelers and flatbed floats with blaring, competing, not always appropriate soundtracks, you dance across town all morning and into the afternoon. Of course, in your foam and felt frog/fat lady/ex-president costume, there is a risk of heat exhaustion. But you get to pelt spectators with candy, which makes it all worthwhile.
Uncool option number three: you could be lame, like me, happily holing up in your momentarily quiet house. (The parade is downtown now, and, blessedly, out of earshot.) Around one in the afternoon, you might suddenly laugh out loud, startling the dogs, when you imagine just how horrific traffic’s going to be for the next couple of hours. And you’re so peacefully chez you! But the Locos always get the last laugh.
If you live in Colonia San Antonio, like me, you didn’t sleep well last night, even before the musical wake up call, and you won’t again tonight. Not for a few more days, in fact.
The cuetes (gargantuan bottle rockets from hell), which first woke you a couple of hours before the band, will start again late this afternoon, continue sporadically all day and night tomorrow, and on into Monday, with a few more artillery-style early-morning crescendos. Sunday evening after the parade, there’ll be a big, loud baile at the San Antonio church, sadly only two blocks away. The music will reverberate off your pots and pans and rattle your windowpanes ‘til the early morn. Around three a.m., you’ll be up Googling industrial-strength earplugs.
And then, after two days of madness and just for good measure, and right as you’ve finally fallen asleep, most likely, there’ll be another fusillade of cuetes at dawn on Monday morning. (This one, at least, I understand—Monday morning being a concept highly worth protesting.)
Local locos in San Miguel
But for now, outside my bedroom at 5:23 a.m. on the day before Locos day, the insanity has just begun. Rilke, my reared-in-the-U.S.A. rescue dog, is terrified of loud noises, and thus extremely ill-equipped to live in Mexico. During the cuetes a few hours ago, he was under my bed, whining operatically. Now he’s at the window, barking wildly at the band. I would bark too, if I thought they would hear me.
Once my heart resumes its customary pace, I get up and stumble across the room to close the window. I’m laughing, because it’s the only possible sane response. By the time I get there, the band has stopped playing. Gracias a Dios! As the sky begins to lighten, the musicians sip cups of hot spiked ponche offered by the neighbors as a ritualistic “thank you for waking us up” gesture. As they launch into a spirited, carnivalesque encore, I fall back into bed with a pillow over my head. At last, they oom-pah-pah off to rouse somebody else.
The Joy of Text: Reading as Recreation
A common misconception about literature is that it’s “merely” enjoyable, an escape (as opposed to a “productive” activity). This fallacy has spawned many of the stereotypes that afflict those of us who study and teach literature. It is ironic that, in an entertainment-obsessed culture, the “fun-value” of literature is not enough to validate its intrinsic value. In my most cynical moments, I believe this is simply because the potential of profiting off of literature is limited. Perhaps if “they” (our corporate sponsors?) put commercials in between chapters, books would make a comeback, and literature would once again be valuable and respectable. And now, a brief message from those sponsors (Cox Cable, 3M and Chevron): We currently have several marketing firms and focus groups engaged in researching literature’s profit potential, in order to save it, of course. Ok, now imagine a swelling sentimental soundtrack, a sepia-toned digitally softened image of an educated-looking person (complete with eyeglasses and leather patches on blazer elbows. Sorry, the pipe is no longer p.c.). This person is lovingly thumbing through an old, hardback book as a slightly gravelly but mellifluous voice-over says: “Do people really care about the spotted owl/the harp seal/great books? People do.” Please trust that we are hard at work on this issue. In the meantime, continue to watch television and consume heavily, like good little Americans. Thank you.
Yes, written narratives can provide enjoyment, and partly in an escapist sense. However, this idea need not be negative. I never thought I would be arguing for escapism (again, in our escapist culture), but my ideas on the meaning of “escape” have been modified. Escape need not be limited to its modern connotation: a flight from responsibility or thought. In fact, the word carries some very positive (and relevant) denotations: “To break loose from confinement; get free…to avoid capture, danger, or harm…to grow beyond a cultivated area.” (American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition)
The escape of recreation can be a productive vacation from the relentless pressures, confinements and even cultivations of being. As Jerry Farber argues, the “esthetic release” offered by any form of art can be a mini psychological vacation—a trip to the mind spa for a mud bath and a rubdown—that leaves us better able to cope with “reality.” “When [the esthetic release] is most nearly complete, we seem to merge with what we are perceiving: the sky, the novel, the song; all responsibility for self seems to have vanished” (18). And unlike other “extractive” forms of reading (a newspaper, for instance), in reading literature, our constant striving stops. (Farber 20) Because of the temporary disengagement of our personal needs and goals,… the perception becomes an end in itself” (Farber 20). And we get a break.
We should not underestimate the value of a brief (healthy) hiatus from self-concern. As Farber notes, the need for a break from self-concern is so strong (especially, I think, in such a fragmented, stressful and noisy world) that we seek to escape it in many unhealthy ways. Most of the unhealthy escape routes, such as televised sporting events, alcohol and drugs, don’t just diminish self-concern, but “our ability to respond to anything, even art” (Farber 21).
Wolfgang Iser also addresses the escape offered by literature. He describes “the temporary self-alienation that occurs to the reader when his consciousness brings to life the ideas formulated by the author” (Implied 66). Once the reader is “entangled” in the text, her own preconceptions continually lose ground to the text (part of the loss of self-concern). The text becomes her “present,” and her own ideas “fade into the past.” When this occurs, the reader is open to “the immediate experience of the text, which was impossible so long as [her] preconceptions were [her] ‘present’” (Implied 64). Iser claims this mini-vacation from selfhood is more than just pleasurable, but essential to the formation of the text’s illusion (which is in turn, central to other important benefits of reading). Interestingly, the illusion offered by the literary text is dependent on, and may actually be even more beneficial than the escape it offers.
Now, you may be thinking that this might be a good time to flex our ideologies, make a few value judgements, and decide on what kind of literature would constitute a negative escape, in which case, I’d vote for Danielle Steele and John Grisham, among others. But then we’d have to discuss whether or not they constitute “literature,” which would, no doubt, lead us into a heated debate over what literature actually is, which…I’m sorry, but I’ve just been advised by our sponsors that we do not have time to address these issues here. Thank you.
Let’s see, we were discussing an escape that leads to illusion. That doesn’t sound too positive, does it? (The sponsors are eyeing me nervously again.) Once again, an important distinction lies in the way we define our terms. According to Iser, illusion is a “fixed or definable outline” taken on by the “gestalt” of a text, and is essential to our understanding of that text. (Implied 59) While he recognizes that “an overdose of illusion may lead to triviality,” he claims it is still necessary. If we couldn’t find or impose the consistency on a literary text that creates its illusion, we would simply stop reading. The text’s illusion makes the experience it offers more accessible; it makes it “readable” (Implied 59). And although it’s only a a transitory state, illusion is necessary to “understanding of an unfamiliar experience”(Implied 61). In order to process something well, must be able to imagine it (which explains the importance of framing, metaphor and the use of examples even in expository writing, and of course, in teaching).
This illusion-building process creates a space in which several phenomena can occur. As the reader builds a text’s illusions and alternates between involvement in and observation of them, she:
“opens [herself] up to the unfamiliar world without being imprisoned in it. Through this process, the reader moves into the presence of the fictional world and so experiences the realities of the text as they happen” (Implied 61).
Having left our self-involvement temporarily behind, we begin to create in our minds the illusion suggested by the text, if consistency is not obvious, we attempt to create it and apply it to the text. This all points to the fact that the writing of a text is by no means the last creative act on the chain. Embedded in the act of reading a narrative, is an act of creation: re-creation.
Unlike most other forms of escape (aesthetic or otherwise), reading is creative. The reader does not just passively absorb a text, like she could a piece of music, a painting, a movie, a glass of wine, a quaalude. And, although many of these would probably evoke some activity of the imagination, not nearly as consistently and effectively as in the reading of a narrative. Interestingly, opportunities for re-creative activity are limited in many other forms of art, like music and the visual arts, where most of “the gestalt” is provided. You could stare at the elaborate walls of the Sistine Chapel for years and not achieve the exact sort of mental activity and pleasure offered by one of Matisse’s five-line, black and white sketches. And yet, a text provides even less visual information than a sketch.
There are also important difference between other forms of narrative, like film, and the literary text: in the text, few or no images are provided for us—we must imagine, literally make images—a process that makes the experience special. “With the novel the reader must use his imagination to synthesize the info given him, and so his perception is simultaneously richer and more private…” (Iser,Implied 57) If one can see something, one cannot imagine it. As Iser puts it, It is precisely the “elements of indeterminacy,” the pregnant lack in a text that enable us to picture things, to re-create. Without this negative space left open, like a blank canvas, “we should not be able to use our imagination” (Implied 57).
The benefits of this recreative activity range further than mere mental exercise. Once we put ourselves, our ideas, our “striving” aside, we don’t just get a break, we don’t just get to form images—something new becomes possible—we are able to learn. As Iser points out, “reading reflects the process by which we gain experience” (Implied 65). In order to learn, we must make room for new ideas. When we read, “we must suspend the ideas and attitudes that shape our personalities before we can experience the unfamiliar world of the literary text”(65). During this process, Iser says, something happens to us, much more than mere “identification” with the text. Iser points out that our little vacations from ourselves can remove certain barriers to learning. The removal of the “subject-object division that otherwise is a prerequisite for all knowledge and all observation, and the removal of this decision puts reading in an apparently unique position as regards the possible absorption of new experiences” (Iser, Implied 66). In becoming involved and invested in a text, in participating in the act of recreation, we “‘other’ the text less, are more likely to learn, be swayed, at least momentarily” (Iser, Implied 66). (There’s an interesting resonance here to Robert Scholes’ concepts of narrativity and surrender/recovery.) In an early effort to refute fallacies regarding fiction as an unproductive, escapist pleasure, D.W. Harding had this to say: “It seems nearer the truth…to say that fictions contribute to defining the reader’s or spectator’s values, and perhaps stimulating his desires, rather than to suppose that they gratify desire by some mechanism of vicarious experience” (qtd in Iser, Implied 67). Reading is an active process, whose dynamism can lead to intellectual growth.
Now we are talking about an escape that leads to illusion which can lead to growth, development. (The sponsors are smiling and nodding, relieved to finally hear an unambiguously positive concept.) This positive aspect of the escape offered by a literary text is twofold. The text begins to serve as both a parallel (a mirror that reflects experiences, dispositions similar to the reader’s) and a contrast. In this paradoxical situation, the reader is “forced to reveal aspects of himself in order to experience a reality which is different from his own” (Iser, Implied 57). The impact on the reader depends on the reader’s level of active participation—in providing unwritten parts of text, “in supplying all the missing links, he must think in terms of experiences different from his own; indeed, it is only by leaving behind the familiar world of his own experience that the reader can truly participate in the adventure the literary text offers him” (Iser, Implied 57). Reading’s similarity to the process by which we gain experience leads to the same possibility of broadened horizons, and improved thinking—not just idealistically, but psychologically, and even physiologically:
“In the act of reading, having to think of something that we have not yet experienced does not mean only being in a position to conceive or even understand it; it also means that such acts of conception are possible and even successful to the degree that they lead to something being formulated in us. For someone else’s thoughts can only take a form in our consciousness if, in the process, our unformulated faculty for deciphering these thoughts is brought into play—a faculty which, in the act of deciphering, also formulates itself.” (Iser, Implied 67-68, my emphasis)
While the literary narrative allows new ideas in, it also helps us to examine our old ones. When texts present us with negative space, gaps to fill, the object, says Iser, is to “make us aware of the nature of our own capacity for providing links. In such cases, the text refers back directly to our own preconceptions—which are revealed by the act of interpretation that is a basic element of the reading process.” (Implied, 55). In the process of absorbing a narrative and forming its illusion in our minds, we are offered a glimpse of our own preconceptions, specifically, opinions or conceptions that were “formed in advance of full or adequate knowledge or experience,” our prejudices or biases (American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition).
Not only can the process of reading result in growth, it can also lead to self-discovery. As Iser argues, in presenting a “need to decipher,” the text also lets us formulate our own capacity to decipher: “we bring to the fore an element of our being of which we are not directly conscious…it also entails the possibility that we may formulate ourselves and so discover what had previously seemed to elude our consciousness.” (Implied 68, my emphasis) The development made possible by literature’s recreative activity can lead to self formulation and self knowledge. (The sponsors are shrugging. They are unsure of the value of that last one, but are willing to accept it.)
In the reading of a literary text, the reader’s capacity to absorb new experiences, to examine preconceptions and to decipher meaning are reinforced, strengthened. Horizons are expanded, the intellect is exercised and developed, and self examination and knowledge are encouraged. This is a more concrete and less idealistic version of the New Critical idea of Literature making a reader a “better person.” Who knows how the reader’s ethics may be affected, she may not become a “better person”—kinder, more honest and responsible—but the reading of literature will almost surely make her a better thinker.
Perhaps it’s time for a disclaimer: the reading of literature is not totally without risk. There are potential psychological side-effects. Consumption of literary texts can lead to increased mental activity, unfamiliar thought patterns and a marked desire to discuss what you’ve read. Be warned: this can be a problem in some social circles. Friends don’t often let friends ramble on about Dostoevsky. Keep this in mind and consume wisely and safely. In fact, due to issues of liability, the sponsors have asked me to ask you not to continue reading this paper unless you are over 18 or have parental approval and/or supervision. Thank you.
…
Since the advent of the modern world there has been a clearly discernible tendency toward privileging the performative aspect of the author-text-reader relationship, whereby the pre-given is no longer viewed as an object of representation but rather as material from which something new is fashioned.”
(Iser, Prospecting 249)
Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” embodies many of these recreative activities in a very direct way. Using a narrator who actively manipulates and controls the reader’s experience, Le Guin plays with her readers, emphasizing the “performative aspect” of a very interesting “author-text-reader relationship.” The results of this game are, I believe, heightened activity and involvement by the reader (re-creation), which leads to heightened pleasure in reading (recreation), and potentially to more dramatic self-questioning and possible development by the reader (the re-creation of oneself).
Le Guin’s story begins as a conventional narrative, diving right in to the creation of the illusion. “With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea” (Cassill, 967). This sentence is typical of the first paragraph’s densely image-packed, highly descriptive, almost cinematic language. In less than 30 lines, Le Guin establishes a mythical society called Omelas. Like a fairy tale, Omelas is a bit generic—important elements are described, but not in too much detail—allowing the reader to make the society her own (fill the gaps), becoming instantly involved in recreation. As we find it, Omelas is happiness incarnate, with the Festival of Summer about to begin (can you think of a better time/reason to have a festival?). There is mass merriment of various kinds—something for everyone. There is music, dancing, flapping banners, a race about to begin, many clanging bells, and joy all around. Le Guin starts the reader off on a run, situating her in the middle of an ultra-happy fairy tale/fantasy setting.
Interestingly, this setting is one that would be at least familiar, if not nostalgically beloved to most people in our culture. Not accidentally, she creates a familiar and ideal situation, with which she seduces the reader. And despite being an expert science fiction and futuristic world-builder, Le Guin doesn’t choose an alien world to get this message across, but a very familiar one, one dear to most of our ideologies, and one which sets up some rather specific expectations.
In the first paragraph, the reader is immediately active, recreating. With the author’s prompting, we are off and running, each imagining our own Omelas. I believe this is a pleasurable activity to most of us—although to different degrees. Being an idealist and a lover of fairy-tales, I was only too willing to chuck my disbelief out the nearest window and plunge, head first, into the narrative. Omelas came alive in my head. (Which, i believe, lead directly to how strongly the story affected me later.) However, I know of other readers who, being a bit more cynical or less fond of the familiar setting, moved into the story more carefully, even a bit suspiciously. Was the pleasure of their “esthetic experience” lessened by their skepticism? Perhaps, because skepticism (being a sort of protection against deflated expectations) would certainly influence the way their expectations are later shattered, which Iser believes is so important.
According to Iser, the esthetic experience made possible by the literary text is the result of a balancing operation performed by the reader (between observation of and involvement in illusion, and between establishing and disrupting consistency). (Implied, 61) If the balancing act stops, recreative activity stops, the fun stops. “The inherent nonachievement of balance is a prerequisite for the very dynamism of the operation. In seeking the balance, we inevitably have to start out with certain expectations, the shattering of which is integral to the esthetic experience” (Implied, 61).
Le Guin actively seeks to manipulate the reader’s fluctuation between observation of and involvement in illusion, which directly affects the reader’s experience of the text. In “Omelas,” after a paragraph of straight narrative, suddenly a voice breaks in, vaguely addressing the reader, beginning a sort of dialogue that will grow stronger. “How is one to tell about the joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?” (Cassill, 968) Le Guin has just given us a very vivid description of joy, so what is the purpose of this question? It does not enhance our illusion—the images she has carefully planted in our minds—but actually disrupts it. She goes on to describe the Omelasians and their culture, in a more matter-of-fact way, “They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer anymore” (Cassill 968, my emphasis). Here, she begins to address reader directly, with “you see” and then positions herself with that reader (“we”), in contrast to Omelas.
Here, again, Le Guin begins subtly. The narrator first admits a kind of ignorance about her narrative: ”I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few” (968). She begins to lure us into a more active re-creation by suggesting or offering opinions about how Omelas is——which is, of course, entirely under her control——as if we could change it. Eventually, she asks us directly to participate, claiming her words seem too unreal, too like a fairy tale. ”Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly, I cannot suit you all” (Cassill 968). What follows is a sort of guided utopian brainstorming session.
We are told certain things and allowed leeway to imagine on others, “it doesn’t matter, as you like” (Cassill 969). Then Le Guin gets really playful and begins manipulating the reader’s illusion building. Addressing the reader directly once again, the narrator worries that Omelas might seem too “goody-goody,” and gives out another direct invitation to participate in the narrative. “If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don’t hesitate” (Cassill 969).
These ongoing invitations to participate and add to the narrative play with the subject-object division of which Iser speaks, manipulating our oscillation between involvement in (re-creation) and observation of the illusion. These games also keep any balance between the two poles at bay, which, according to Iser, retains the dynamism of the esthetic experience. Meanwhile, the idea (or “illusion”?) that we are helping to build Omelas (by being free to formulate some of its elements) involves us more deeply in the formation of the illusion.
At the same time, Le Guin is continually raising and shattering expectations. Ranging from the first paragraph’s implied fairy tale/ utopian expectations (which are later devastated by the Omelasians’ dark secret), to some much more overtly raised and debunked expectations. As early as the second paragraph, Le Guin starts to anticipate, encourage and manipulate our expectations. She openly discusses what we would expect, based on the type of narrative she’s created: “Given a description such as this, one tends to make certain assumptions… one tends to look next for the king…” (Cassill 968). This, of course, is an invitation to imagine/expect a king. This expectation however, is quickly frustrated as the narrator abruptly takes over again: “But there was no king” (Cassill 968).
In her discussion of Omelasian sexuality, Le Guin really toys with the reader’s expectations. We’ve been invited to add an orgy, if we feel Omelas needs it. Le Guin then takes it upon herself to direct the reader’s imagined orgy:
“Let us not, however, have temples from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstacy and ready to copulate with anyone, lover or stranger, who desires union with the deep godhead of the blood…” (Cassill 969)
In asking us not to create this scene, she creates it, and we see it. Is she playing with us? Just when we think maybe she’s worried about the morality or explicit sexuality of that image, she reverses that assumption with the rest of the sentence: “although that was my first idea” (Cassill 969). She then explains that it’s the clergy, not the copulation that bothers her. Displaying the very opposite of our possible assumption, she proposes that the nudes should be wandering about, “offering themselves like divine soufflés to the hunger of needy and the rapture of the flesh” (Cassill 969). She proceeds to celebrate the copulation. This is typical of the story’s twists and turns and of Le Guin’s slightly perverse humor. She seems to enjoy dabbling with our expectations—luring us into a belief, an assumption and then pulling what we thought was the rug out from under us. It should be noted that, like her story, Le Guin’s playfulness is not without a serious social conscience. She includes what she calls “a not unimportant point:” that the children of these rituals be “beloved and looked after by all…” (Cassill 969). (This is perhaps the least believable aspect of her fantastic story—that a society could exist entirely without sexual stigmas.)
In the fourth and fifth paragraphs, Le Guin returns to uninterrupted narrative. Here, I believe she is reinforcing the illusion of Omelas, which was undermined by the narrator’s rather impertinent, if useful presence. Like the opening paragraph, these are rich in description and lack the direct presence of the narrator. These paragraphs also pick up threads from the first one. Le Guin once again illustrates the joy present in Omelas, she continues to describe the race—the impatience of horses and riders who begin to line up at starting line, the crowds who are assembled to watch… With these descriptions, the reader’s anticipation mounts, and seems due to climax when the race begins. But the race never begins. Instead of the starting pistol, the narrative halts again, with a jolt. At this point, the reader may well be frustrated, intrigued or both. Either way, she is involved, and in no way prepared for what comes next. Le Guin lures us into a fairy tale, invites us participate and then draws us into a nightmare.
Why this bumpy ride? According to Iser, it’s simply more effective. “The act of recreation is not a smooth or continuous process, but one which, in its essence, relies on interruptions of the flow to render it efficacious” (Implied 62). Le Guin consciously constantly interrupts and guides the narrative. This forces the reader to review and revise the illusion she is building, the expectations with which it is formulated, and the preconceptions upon which it is based. Depending on the reader, this process can be frustrating or fun, but it generally leads to greater involvement with the text, simply because it is unexpected and leads to increased interpretive activity on the part of the reader.
Now, Le Guin introduces Omelas’ dark secret, its raison d’être hereux. Nothing we have read has really prepared us for the lonely, malnourished child locked in the tool room. But perhaps it is our utter surprise, coupled with our extra ordinary investment in the illusion of Omelas that makes this development more disturbing and poignant. The readers of this story are not unlike the children of Omelas—blindly enjoying everything, until they learn the secret…or maybe the cynics among us were waiting for something like this? Either way, to different extents, the readers have played an active role in the creation of this suddenly suspect utopia, which makes for stronger feelings when things become complex.
These strategies increase the recreative activity offered by the text and greatly enhance the re-creative experience, in its three forms, because, as Iser writes, “it is only by activating the reader’s imagination that the author can hope to involve him and so realize the intentions of his text” (Implied 57). It was Le Guin’s intention to arouse ambiguous feelings, to have the reader want to believe in Omelas (perhaps even feel like part of it) and desire its happiness, in order to be more devastated by what makes it possible. In the introduction added to the story when it was collected in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, Le Guin says the story was inspired by the following passage from “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” by William James:
[I]f the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier’s and Bellamy’s and Morris’s utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment, what except a specific and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though the impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?”
(Le Guin, Quarters 275)
The story is organized to make us not just think about, but feel the conflict of “clutching at the happiness offered” and knowing how hideous it would be to enjoy it, to benefit from such a “bargain.”
Le guin then writes, “The dilemma of the American conscience can hardly be better stated.” (Winds, 275) “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is meant to be a mirror not just of society in the abstract, but of us.
In another way, Le Guin is actually “playing” with us. In Prospecting, Iser applies strategies of game playing to the literary text. One of those strategies is mimicry, “a play designed to generate illusion. Whatever is denoted by the signifier or foreshadowed by the schemata should be taken as if it were what it says” (256). Iser goes on to explain two reasons for this. First of all, “the more perfect the illusion, the more real will seem the world it depicts” (256). “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” first presents a very effective and persuasive illusion. This draws the reader in and involves her in the text, while raising both minor and major expectations that will later be exploded. Second, “If the illusion…is punctured and so revealed as what it is, the world it depicts turns into a looking glass enabling the referential world outside the text to be observed” (256). Omelas becomes a socially-conscious mirror image of America in several ways. Le Guin’s interruption of the narrative punctures the illusion, creating a juxtaposition of the illusion of Omelas with its status as a literary construct. The narrator’s positioning of herself with “us” in contrast to Omelas, reinforces the referential aspect of the illusion.
In order to get a very serious message across, Le Guin chooses a playful approach over a didactic one. This was an intelligent and practical choice. These sophisticated games are by no means prerequisites to social commentary, but it takes skill to criticize a reader’s accepted beliefs, while keeping her not only vulnerable and open-minded, but actually invested in the vehicle of the criticism. A narrative can blend a social message with recreation, in its many forms, making the message both more poignant and more palatable. But, as Iser argues, the literary text must do this very delicately:
“Strangely enough, we feel that any confirmative effect—such as we implicitly demand of expository texts, as we refer to the objects they are meant to present—is a defect in a literary text. For the more a text individualizes or confirms an expectation it has initially aroused, the more aware we become of its didactic purpose, so that at best we can only accept or reject the thesis forced upon us. More often than not, the very clarity of such texts will make us want to free ourselves from their clutches.” (Implied 53)
The carefully-crafted illusion and expectation games in “Omelas” keep our involvement high, our defenses down, and our preconceptions aside—thus clearing a path for a disturbing message to enter and perhaps occasion the third, and perhaps most important kind of re-creation with which we are concerned: self questioning, self knowledge, self re-creation:
“The efficacy of a literary text is brought about by the apparent evocation and subsequent negation of the familiar. What at first seemed to be an affirmation of our assumptions leads to our own rejection of them, thus tending to prepare us for a re-orientation. And it is only when we have outstripped our preconceptions and left the shelter of the familiar that we are in a position to gather new experiences” (Implied, 64).
Once we have given in to and participated in the building the illusion of Omelas, we are sudenly alone and vulnerable in a new, dark Omelas. We have been stripped of our assumptions. Our expectations have been demolished (and so made visible, and opened to critique). Our preconceptions no longer ring true. We have been prepared for a “re-orientation.”
It seems that only in the presence of uncertainty are we really able to evolve, to grow. Ironically, this recreative pattern has long resided in one of our oldest narrative genres—the fairy tale. In a story that is said to explain “the necessity of an individual morality” (Contemporary Authors, 269), it seems fitting that, like the fairy tale hero, the ones who choose to walk away from the beautiful but flawed perfection of Omelas must leave the familiar and comfortable and venture into the unknown to find the only reward greater than “happiness”—themselves.
Françoise Lemieux
11 December, 1998
Seeing San Miguel for the first time, again.
As published in the Atención San Miguel newspaper, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Seeing San Miguel for the first time, again.
Do not adjust your Monitor. This picture is blurry. Read on to find out why.
Remember the first time you laid eyes on San Miguel de Allende? I don’t, but I imagine it must be a splendid sight. Unforgettable, even.
My first eyeful came in 1969, when my bohemian mother moved us down here (I was 18 months old). While mom learned to paint, I learned to speak. Along with the smell of linseed oil, I got very used to San Miguel’s riot of shape and color.
Our little time-warp municipality, with its unique palette of ornate colonial architecture, blazing colors and improbably blue skies, should be enough to provide daily delight for anyone’s retina. But I have to admit I seldom see the beauty that surrounds me.
I pass by our improbable pink cathedral nearly every day, but months will go by without me looking up at it at all, much less in wonder. It seems I’ve succumbed to one of the risks of living in a postcard place: I’ve developed immunity to it.
My ambient blindness is a serious problem. If I’m not seeing San Miguel, I might as well live in Detroit. (I hear parking is easier there.) So I formulate a plan.
Each October, throngs of photographers descend on San Miguel under the auspices of the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. They come to indulge their photographic obsessions, to hone their skills, and to find inspiration in our abundance of eye candy. Last year, I joined them.
With income in mind, the small, adult part of my brain chooses a workshop called “Travel Stock Photography.” But really, what I want from this course is a reintroduction to my hometown.
…
Just before sunset on a Sunday evening in early November, I wander into the courtyard at the Hotel Posada de La Aldea. We, the workshoppers, are to meet for drinks before orientation. A chilly fall breeze blows, rustling the leaves of the ficus trees. The sound of shutters whirring competes with the trilling of the crickets—the place is crawling with photographers.
As the light fades, they reluctantly detach their faces from their equipment and gravitate over to a cluster of wrought iron tables, where a bar has been set up. Inadequate schmoozer that I am, I’m a bit tense. So many new people, and I’ve never seen such big lenses. (My camera, I realize, is woefully inadequate. My lens is Lilliputian.)
Aside from being quite friendly, my new comrades are dedicated photophiles. Entirely willing to forgo the leisure part of travel, they’ll spend the week shooting from golden hour to golden hour, edit long into the night, and not feel they missed a thing. As a frizzy-haired woman next to me, hugging a camera the size of a toaster says, “What could be better than spending a week with your camera and new friends in an exotic place?”
…
Monday morning. After an early breakfast with Santa Fe faculty and fellow enthusiasts, we file into our conference room/classroom at the Aldea. The lights soon go off and the images go up. Each participant has prepared his or her ten best-ever photographs for this introductory show.
Seeing each person’s work is illuminating — a bit like looking inside them. We get a glimpse into each other’s quirks and affinities, style, and “eye.” Then it’s time for class.
Unlike most Santa Fe workshops, a large part of ours is lecture, stock photography being a singular and exacting genre. Normally, spending several hours a day taking notes and looking at slides in a dark room isn’t the ideal way to pass the time in a major travel destination like San Miguel. But in this case, it’s perfect.
First, because instructor Patrick Donehue—ex-vice-president of Corbis, the world’s number two stock photo emporium—is as engaging a speaker as he is encyclopedic about his field. Second, because it’s all about photography. What could be dull about that? The morning flies by.
In the afternoon, we are let loose on an unsuspecting San Miguel with two assignments: to take quality photos for an imaginary high-end travel article, and to garner great stock photography. Images that—if we are very lucky, skilled and savvy—could make us a fortune (or at least pay for a cappuccino at Cafe del Jardín).
Before setting out, I pore over my notes and compile a meticulous shooting schedule. Once behind the camera, however, the plan flies out of my head and I find myself compulsively clicking away. Then the sun is setting.
The five intervening hours have somehow vanished, and the molten light has my brain tingling. I run into our instructor in the Jardín. “The town is sparkling,” I babble. He smiles. I’m still out on the town at 7:00 pm, when it’s time to go to the Angela Peralta for photo presentations by the week’s faculty. More inspiration. More eye food. It’s a feast, and I’m pigging out.
I head home around 9:00, yearning for rest. But I have homework: comb through more than 500 pictures, try to pick ten worthy of imposing on my group tomorrow, and then tweak them on the computer.
When I finally get to bed, I can’t sleep. I can only think about images I’ve seen, made or might make tomorrow. Much later, I doze off—only to dream about taking photos.
…
Tuesday begins with everyone’s Monday best, and I’m eager witness to my classmates’ first impressions of San Miguel. Despite feeling like I may have seen it all around here, many of their images are surprising, fresh—new, even. Maybe I’m on the right track here.
We move on to lecture. I’m a bit distracted. While I’m sure it’s vital to know about the different stock photo rights and payment systems, I’m itching to get out on the streets again.
Peering through the viewfinder that afternoon, I’m less frenzied than the day before. After all, I think, I do live here. I could do this every day. So I try to stroll. Take my time. Before long, I am happy, very happy. Also slightly insane. Shameless, I accost complete strangers to get a picture, chatting them up in the hopes of coaxing a natural look.
San Miguel de Allende street musicians on a break
I approach the young woman selling esquites (corn on the cob with mayo and chile); four members of the Tuna Oratoriana—buskers in antiquated velvet costumes complete with puffy sleeves; five teenagers lolling on the cathedral steps; mariachis chatting on cell phones; the newspaper vendor; the shoe-shine guys; all my favorite waiters. Apparently, no one is safe from me when I’m armed with a camera.
…
Wednesday brings a discussion of trends in a different kind of stock market. After class, I go to market—specifically, the Mercado Principal, where my mother used to take me as a child to get produce and flowers. I still frequent the place in search of my own bouquets, but his time, the old mercado is transformed.
Mounds of Technicolor fruit beckon sweetly. The veggies exude a savory allure. I lose myself in photographing a shy young girl at a torta stand festooned with religious icons; a laughing man making licuados for friends; a tangled profusion of flowers; legume vendors entranced by the telenovela that echoes from nearly every stand; an icon of the Virgin Mary haloed by the colors of the Mexican flag—jalapeños, red chiles and onions. Hours later I emerge, rapt.
…
Thursday, our last full workshop day, means more in-class enlightenment—portfolios, agencies, money matters—and our final afternoon of shooting. By now, I figure, I should be a seasoned pro: my vision keen, my images impeccable, my trigger finger honed and twitching slightly as it hovers over the shutter button.
Instead, I am lethargic, paralyzed by an utter lack of inspiration. Listless, I roam the streets of my picture-perfect town, half-heartedly waving my inferior camera around. People, color, old buildings. Yeah, whatever. This must be burnout from an intense week.
At a loss, I start messing around with my focus ring. I take a deliberately blurry picture. Before I know it, I’m in the zone, annoying taxi drivers who do not appreciate my squatting in middle of the street to get the perfect shot. I end up with 206 decidedly not-sharp pictures of Hidalgo Street.
The vivid red, ochre and pink buildings, the darker rooflines zigzagging against the blue sky, the cobbled street leading out of the frame and into parts unknown. Ahh. Another indistinct image traces the soft white arches of the church on San Francisco behind a dreamy soft palm tree. Ahh. For some reason, these pictures bring back my childhood. (Was I nearsighted as a kid?)
Instead of wasting a day, I feel I have captured the smallest bit of the essence of my own San Miguel. The magic of this town, I realize, resides not only in the fine details of its historic architecture, or even in its singular people.
Abstract San Miguel de Allende palm with church spires
It’s also there in the abstract—in large blocks of rich color, in the geometry of stonework accent lines, and in the cerulean sky embracing it all. So, I spend my last afternoon of directed shooting drunk on beauty and, once again ignoring the assignment, cruising the calles with my pupils dilated and my lens unfocused. My town, once again, is splendid.
…
On Friday morning, the group is very kind about my images, but I‘m pretty sure they think I’ve lost it. Huh. Maybe she dropped her camera? Maybe a screw or two did unwind, but of the ludicrous number of images I’ve shot this week, these are my favorites.
Of course, my blurred epiphanies are not included with the sharper images in the Friday night dinner show, celebrating our week of work, but I still love them. Partly because my brain tingles when I look at them, and partly because they are physical proof that I found a way to really see my hometown in all its glory, without recourse to psychotropic substances.
It’s been nearly a year. Sometimes I still forget to see. There I am in the car, cursing the kid on the four-wheeler that just cut me off instead of enjoying the color of the morning light on a stone lintel, the burnished glow of an umber wall.
Fortunately for me, in San Miguel, beauty is always just around the corner. All I have to do is open my eyes. And take another workshop.
(As published in Atencion San Miguel)
Businessman Turned Sculptor Makes an Art of Recycling
As published in the Atención San Miguel newspaper —
Businessman Turned Sculptor Makes an Art of Recycling
Donkey sculpture outside Casa Reyna 2
Raul Reyna Viscaya is a master of reinvention, starting with himself. In 49 years, he’s gone from poverty on the rancho to entrepreneurial success in San Miguel, with many colorful stops along the way. Not one to rest on his laurels, he’s at it again. But this time, it’s art.
Reina’s many incarnations began in 1959, in Rancho Tres Palmas, about 25 kilometers Northeast of San Miguel. The youngest of 12 children, he grew up in a rambling old adobe house with 24 bedrooms and a huge mesquite tree in the courtyard. The Viscayas had once been wealthy—a long, long, long time ago. Reyna’s father inherited the century-old family home, its mysteries and rumors of buried treasure, and no money. Dad farmed and cared for livestock, while Mom ran the house and a tienda in one of the rooms. Their son, the last child left at home, helped them both.
Reyna’s education was homespun. “My mother would put me in front of a book and a notebook while she washed clothes,” he says. ‘Read me this, then write it out.’ She’d tell me. If I didn’t, I got a strong pinch.” His farmer father taught him his trade, the attendant skills, and then some. “Papá made his own plows out of mesquite,” he remembers. “Then others in the rancho had him make theirs.” Not surprisingly, Reyna grew to be quite a handy young man.
After his father’s death, nineteen-year-old Reyna convinced his mother to sell the rancho and move to San Miguel. They bought a small house on Relox and he set out to look for employment. The big city wasn’t kind to Reyna at first—nobody would hire him. To them, he says, he was just another kid from the Rancho, who didn’t know how to do anything useful. Out of desperation, he agreed to a plan of his sister’s, a nun at Las Monjas. She taught him another family skill and sent clients. For the next eight months, he did embroidery to support himself and his mother.
Finally, he found a job as a waiter. Not long after, more work came along at a nearby carpenter’s. No more embroidery! Reyna spent the next two years working literally night and day, saving as much money he could. “Some days, I‘d only get a couple of hours rest,” he recalls with a smile.
Reyna finally got to go to school when he was 24. “I’ve only come to learn to divide,” he warned Maestra Carmelita at the Escuela de Sollano. “And then, I’ll be leaving.” He needed division in order to progress as a carpenter, so he underwent a formal education…for a couple of weeks. Then he got back to work.
His many labors paid off when he was able to buy a small carpentry workshop and quit his jobs. He began making and restoring furniture. By now a confirmed workaholic, Reyna also started selling at markets around the area—used clothing, pens and pencils, anything and everything. “People started saying to me ‘Raul, you’re good at selling things,” he remembers. “‘I have a chair or a table,’ they’d say. ‘Will you sell it for me?’”
In 1982, Reyna heard that the Hotel Colonial on Canal (what is now the Plaza Colonial) was being remodeled. He tracked down the owner and bought all his vintage doors, on credit. Soon after, in the front room of Reyna’s house, San Miguel’s first used furniture bazaar, “La Puerta Vieja,” opened its (old) doors. Sensing a budding market, he kept buying beat-up doors, carrying them home on his bicycle. Soon, Reyna had five stores in town. He bought a truck and started driving all over the region, bringing back treasures to fix up and sell.
Reyna in his main store
Fourteen years ago, he opened Casa Reyna on the road to Celaya. It’s hard to miss the barn-like emporium, festooned with objects from the beautiful to the bizarre—stone carvings, ancient doors, massive “Harleys,” strange cultural relics. Even Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage was once part of its everchanging display. In 2000, Reyna opened another roadside attraction—a second huge store on the highway to Queretaro.
His shops are a baroque blend of gallery, museum, yard sale, and grandma’s attic, whose eccentric abundance would make Gabriel Garcia Marquez blush. In Reynaland, boredom is not an option. Sensory overload, maybe, but never boredom. And we’re not just talking about the merchandise. Interspersed with antiques, bric-a-brac, and oddments, are Reyna’s offbeat displays of creativity (the fishing boat staircase at the main store, for example). And now there are the sculptures.
Reyna’s most recent obsession began with a case of buyer’s remorse. About three years ago, he bought the contents of a defunct silver mine, sight unseen. When a mountain of iron junk of dubious marketability (including 1,600 shovels, 160 wheelbarrows, a bunch of minecars, and scores of picks and chisels) was unloaded at his place, he got a bit nervous. “What am I going to do with all this stuff?” he wondered.
For the next year, question dogged him, regularly waking him up at night. (The elderly shovels weren’t exactly flying off the shelves.) Finally, an answer came. “I got this idea to make a shovel into a mask,” explains Reyna. “And then, I thought ‘hey, maybe I can make an animal.’”
This epiphany, however, lead not to more good nights’ sleep, but to fewer. Soon after, visions of a wheelbarrow ostrich woke Reyna at two a.m. and propelled him to his workshop. “My wife thought I was crazy.” He explains, “But I didn’t want to lose the idea.”
Inspiration now routinely hauls him out of bed, sending him to either notebook or studio. Mrs. Reyna is not as thrilled with this rampant creativity as her husband. “She is always mad at me now,” he says with a what-can-I-do? shrug. “Because I don’t let her get enough sleep.”
Baroque chair
Maybe he has gone a bit nuts. Or perhaps he’s a visionary. Either way, he’s turned a pile of dross into a body of work. His materials include discarded industrial equipment, dead mufflers, old rebar, junked tools, and worn-out horseshoes. The resulting sculptures are large and whimsical, yet grounded in attention to detail and affection for both animals and objects. Reyna’s reincarnations run the gamut from tractor dinosaurs to a meatgrinder chandelier (a personal favorite) to the myriad manifestations of the shovel. He’s created over 100 sculptures, the latest a life-size, three-dimensional rearing stallion made of 600 horse shoes, for his first show.
Raul Reyna, the gregarious man with the booming voice—the embroiderer, salesman, junk collector, antiquarian, carpenter, artist—has always enjoyed life. He’s just that kind of guy. But now, he’s really having fun. “If you find what you really love to do, you’ll be happy for the rest of your life,” he gushes, beaming. “I’ve been very lucky.”
Reyna’s art has transformed his life and his landscape. Ostrich now roam the grounds of Casa Reyna, and firewood-laden burros loiter in the shade. Pegasus forever strains for the sky, while titan motorcycles await their mythical riders. Dinosaurs keep silent vigil over his vast and quirky empire. And Reyna? Well, he keeps waking up his wife and turning trash into art.
Françoise Lemieux is a writer, photographer, and recovering thrift store junkie living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
Text and photos By Françoise Lemieux
Writers’ Conference a Literary Feast
Miami Herald, Mexico Edition —
Reporting on the second annual San Miguel Writers’ conference.
Text and images, Françoise Lemieux